Taiwan’s stock exchange expects initial share sales to surge for the rest of the year as the nation seeks to end six decades of hostility with China.
Taiwan is expected to have 10 to 15 more new listings for the rest of the year, Schive Chi (薛琦), chairman of Taiwan Stock Exchange Corp (台灣證券交易所), said at a New York conference on Thursday.
Twelve companies have gone public on the Taiwan exchange so far this year, the exchange said.
“The Taiwan Stock Exchange is attractive to investors,” Lawrence Shan (單高年), a senior vice president at the exchange, said by phone yesterday. “Our price-earnings ratio is so strong now because of warming relations with China.”
The benchmark TAIEX index is valued at 24.15 times this year’s earnings, the second highest in Asia after Japan, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
The new listings would come from companies that already trade on other exchanges, Schive added.
Improving ties with China and the easing of listing rules have helped Taiwan draw companies owned by domestic investors that are traded overseas. Hong Kong-traded Want Want China Holdings Ltd (中國旺旺控股), controlled by Taiwanese billionaire Tsai Eng-meng (蔡衍明), began trading Taiwan depository receipts in April.
Overseas individual investors pumped US$7.08 billion into Taiwanese stocks in the first half of the year, compared with a net outflow of US$310 million in the same period a year earlier, according to a statement from the central bank on Aug. 20.
RSS